ientific
definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an announcement of
commanding interest. Why it should not yet have received the recognition
of religious thinkers--for already it has lain some years unnoticed--is
not difficult to understand. The belief in Science as an aid to faith is
not yet ripe enough to warrant men in searching there for witnesses to
the highest Christian truths. The inspiration of Nature, it is thought,
extends to the humbler doctrines alone. And yet the reverent inquirer
who guides his steps in the right direction may find even now in the
still dim twilight of the scientific world much that will illuminate and
intensify his sublimest faith. Here, at least, comes, and comes
unbidden, the opportunity of testing the most vital point of the
Christian system. Hitherto the Christian philosopher has remained
content with the scientific evidence against Annihilation. Or, with
Butler, he has reasoned from the Metamorphoses of Insects to a future
life. Or again, with the authors of "The Unseen Universe," the apologist
has constructed elaborate, and certainly impressive, arguments upon the
Law of Continuity. But now we may draw nearer. For the first time
Science touches Christianity _positively_ on the doctrine of
Immortality. It confronts us with an actual definition of an Eternal
Life, based on a full and rigidly accurate examination of the necessary
conditions. Science does not pretend that it can fulfil these
conditions. Its votaries make no claim to possess the Eternal Life. It
simply postulates the requisite conditions without concerning itself
whether any organism should ever appear, or does now exist, which might
fulfil them. The claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there are
organisms which possess Eternal Life. And the problem for us to solve is
this: Do those who profess to possess Eternal Life fulfil the conditions
required by Science, or are they different conditions? In a word, Is the
Christian conception of Eternal Life scientific?

It may be unnecessary to notice at the outset that the definition of
Eternal Life drawn up by Science was framed without reference to
religion. It must indeed have been the last thought with the thinker to
whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the conception of a Life in
its very nature necessarily eternal, he was contributing to Theology.

Mr. Herbert Spencer--for it is to him we owe it--would be the first to
admit the impartiality of his defin